Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, announced in a blogpost that the company will end its investment in Unity8. Instead, the company will shift its default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME, just like the early days.

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Canonical announces the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition

For those who have been wanting to grab a really potent Ubuntu smartphone, the pickings have been slim. However, today the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition just went on sale. This upper-mid-range device can almost …

After six years of using Unity as the default user interface for Ubuntu desktops, Canonical is officially moving back to GNOME. In a blogpost, Shuttleworth stated that it’s appropriate to reassess the company’s initiatives after a successful quarter and that the company will be ending its investment in Unity8. Indeed, this means the development on Ubuntu phones and tablets is also dead. For better or worse.

Ubuntu Unity was the most important piece in Canonical’s convergence project. Similar to the recently-announced Samsung DeX, the company sought to combine smartphones with the traditional PC experience. Except with Unity, there was no docking; everything you needed from a PC was right inside your phone or tablet. The idea was refreshing, but it never gained much mainstream traction unfortunately.

Shuttleworth acknowledges that while the team believed that convergence in a form of free software would be widely appreciated, markets and the software community saw it as fragmentation. In fact, only six devices ever shipped with Ubuntu, so considering the fact that Firefox OS had 26 and still went down, Ubuntu’s fall was probably to be expected. Today’s mobile space is dominated by Android and iOS, and Ubuntu’s end is yet another sign that without a vast array of applications and developers, it’s near impossible to break into a world of strict duopoly.

However, Canonical will continue its work on open source desktop, which will ship with GNOME. And on top of that, as Shuttleworth points out, despite the demise of Ubuntu Unity, its cloud infrastructure is doing well and will continue to be supported:

The number and size of commercial engagements around Ubuntu on cloud and IoT has grown materially and consistently… The choice, ultimately, is to invest in the areas which are contributing to the growth of the company. Those are Ubuntu itself, for desktops, servers and VMs, our cloud infrastructure products, our cloud operations capabilities, and our IoT story in snaps and Ubuntu Core.

For those who have been wanting to grab a really potent Ubuntu smartphone, the pickings have been slim. However, today the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition just went on sale. This upper-mid-range device can almost compete with some of this year’s flagship, and if you’re a sucker for big, gorgeous screens, well, keep on reading.

The Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition rocks a 5.7 inch screen that sports a resolution of 1080p. Under the hood, the smartphone is juiced by a Samsung Exynos 7420 Octa-core processor that runs on 3GB of RAM. In terms of storage space, you’ve got 32GB to fill up, and with that 21MP rear camera, pictures are sure to take up a healthy portion of that space.

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Meizu Pro 5 review

A now almost standard trend in the Android smartphone world is the presence of "Pro" or "Plus" iterations of popular flagships, with this suffix not only indicative of a bump in size, but, as seen …

This is the most powerful Ubuntu phone currently on the market, and it’s retailing for $369. The Android version of this device certainly impressed us, receiving high marks in display quality and performance, and very high scores in terms of battery life and design. The body feels solid and premium, and if you want extra storage space, it’s there through the microSD card slot. All in all, it’s the best flagship Meizu smartphone we’d seen. Definitely worth a look if you’re wanting to get a taste of a non-Android, non-iOS operating system for a bit.

What are your thoughts regarding this high-end Ubuntu device? Is Canonical trying to push its way into a market where there isn’t space, or could this be a dark horse success story? Let us know where you think the company will be taking their software in the future. As always, stay tuned to Android Authority, your resource for everything Android and beyond!

Meizu officially launched its Pro 5 handset a couple of days ago and today the company has been clarifying its launch plays for the high-end, cost effective smartphone.
The Meizu Pro 5 will initially be heading …

Canonical is set to launch its third Ubuntu powered smartphone in Europe tomorrow, in a bid to better compete with the larger Android operating system. However, this time the company will be selling the phone through an invite-only business model.

The latest Ubuntu smartphone is based on the Meizu MX4 and will retail with a €299 ($345) price tag. The MX4 “Ubuntu Edition” has been available to developers in China since May, but will be available in Europe too, starting from tomorrow. Meizu and Canonical announced a strategy partnership last year and had been showing off a small number of prototypes since 2014.

The modified MX4 is pretty much what you would expect from a competitively priced Chinese manufacturer. The handset features a 5.4-inch display with 1920 x 1152 resolution, 2.2GHz octa-core MT6595 SoC, 2GB of RAM, 20.7MP rear camera, a 2MP front camera and a decent sized 3,100mAh battery. Unfortunately, this model only comes with a limited 16GB of internal storage and no microSD card slot.

The first Ubuntu powered smartphone, the Aquarsis E4.5, went on sale in Europe back in February with a price tag of €170. The low-end handset was already a little dated and overpriced when it launched, but the MX4 is a more fleshed out mid-range handset which may appeal to a wider range of customers.

The first wave of Ubuntu phones don’t appear to have been a huge success, having sold units in the “many thousands”. So this time availability and stock control is going to be tightly monitored with an invitation based system, which we’ve seen before with OnePlus. To be in with a chance to grab an invite you will have to check the Meziu English website and complete the interactive “origami wall” puzzle (when it goes live), which reveals details about the phone and an invite for users to claim.

We will have to wait and see how long the invite system stays in place, although Canonical’s VP of mobile Cristian Parrino stated that most people who visit the site should be able to get their hands on an invite. We’re also waiting on news about whether phone will go on sale in other regions in the coming months.

]]>https://www.androidauthority.com/mx4-ubuntu-edition-europe-619289/feed/16(Update: now selling for €170) The first Ubuntu-powered phone will go on sale in Europehttps://www.androidauthority.com/first-ubuntu-phone-goes-on-sale-in-europe-585600/
https://www.androidauthority.com/first-ubuntu-phone-goes-on-sale-in-europe-585600/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 09:13:34 +0000https://www.androidauthority.com/?p=585600

Update (February 19): The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Phone is now on sale for €169.90 (European Union only). Limited number available. Check it out here.

Original post (February 6)

Ubuntu, the long-lost operating system that was debuted over two years ago, is finally coming to market. Canonical, the company behind the OS, teamed up with Meizu and BQ last February, which ultimately yielded no results in the Ubuntu world. Now, Canonical and BQ are finally releasing the rumored handset, but there are quite a few details to talk about first.

The first Ubuntu phone will be a repurposed Aquaris E4.5, the low-budget BQ handset, which usually runs Android. The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition has a 4.5-inch qHD display with 540 x 960 resolution, a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek A7 processor, 1GB of RAM and a Mali 400 GPU. The phone also has 8GB of internal storage, a 2150mAh battery, an 8MP rear-facing camera and a 5MP front-facing camera. Oh, and there’s no LTE available on this handset. The specifications aren’t anything special, though the handset will ship for a relatively low price at €169.90 (~$195 US).

The Ubuntu phone will be sold a tad unconventionally, as it will only be offered in the European market at launch. Canonical and BQ have partnered with a few European retailers to host a series of online flash sales, the first of which will begin sometime next week. Followers of the @ubuntu and @bqreaders Twitter accounts will be among the first to be notified of the flash sales. While BQ has no plans to bring the handset outside of Europe, Canonical reassures us that they are “actively working on a US device strategy.”

It's designed to deliver content and services directly to categorized home screens, giving users a rich, unfragmented experience.

The Aquaris E4.5 UE will face more competition than expected, given other low-cost options like the Motorola Moto G, E, and countless other budget-friendly handsets around the Android market. Perhaps all isn’t lost with the handset, though. Canonical says they plan to introduce Scopes, which is “a new UI paradigm, designed to deliver content and services directly to categorized home screens, giving users a rich, unfragmented experience.” Scopes will give you categorized home screens that will pull content from multiple sources. This means you’ll get content from YouTube, Vimeo and your own recorded media on the same page, as well as music, news and multiple other page types sent straight to each home screen. The phone supports mainstream HTML5 “beautifully,” and, as Canonical claims, will not be just another Android or iOS clone.

If you can remember back to August 2013, Canonical’s goal for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone was originally set at a steep $32 million, though they ended the crowdfunding campaign after only raising $12.8 million. Even though the company has struggled over the years, and even though the handset isn’t what everyone thought it would be, this is still a very important step for Ubuntu to make it to the mainstream.

Meizu, a Chinese consumer electronics firm, and Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system, have just announced a strategic partnership. The arrangement states a joint set of goals to build and promote a new version of Meizu’s Flyme OS, which will be based on Ubuntu Touch.

Although the exact details regarding hardware remain absent, Meizu has suggested that its first smartphones powered by the new operating system could arrive in both Chinese and European markets come the first quarter of 2015. Its flagship MX4 smartphone could possibly receive an update and a prototype of the software was spotted running on the MX3’s hardware at this year’s MWC, suggesting that the older flagship could also be in line for an update.

Ubuntu Touch uses the same core technologies as the desktop OS, so apps that are designed for Ubuntu Desktop will also run on Ubuntu Touch and vice versa. It’s not yet clear how closely the new software will resemble Meizu’s existing set-up. The company is currently working with AliBaba and using its cloud services, so it’s possible that the two will attempt to merge software, rather than adopt a direct Ubuntu port.

It has been a long time since we’ve heard anything about Ubuntu Touch, but the idea of a cross-compatible desktop and smartphone operating system based on Linux still seems quite appealing.

What do you make of Ubuntu Touch, will Android have a competitor on its hands come next year?

Canonical has announced that it will drop Ubuntu Touch support for various Nexus devices, with only two models to receive continued support including the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 (2013).

In other words, older devices such as the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 (2012) and Nexus 10 will stop receiving Ubuntu Touch support at the end of January, which means users that have installed Canonical’s mobile OS on any of these devices will have to look to unofficial developers for their Ubuntu Touch fixes.

The company explained that it wants to focus its efforts on the latest version of Ubuntu, 14.04, which is set to arrive in April, and only support a smartphone and a tablet model.

Not even the Nexus 5 will be supported by Canonical, or at least not yet, as the costs to do so at this time are deemed to be “too high,” although that may change in the future once Ubuntu 14.04 is out. That means you’ll either have to get a Nexus 4 or a Nexus 7 (2013) tablet to keep using the official Ubuntu Touch builds, in case you don’t already own one of these two devices.

The first true Ubuntu phones are expected to arrive later this year, as the company has confirmed it’s already working with at least one OEM on such devices. A few days ago, the Meizu MX3 has been spotted running Ubuntu, although it’s not clear at this time whether the device will officially support the mobile OS or not.

Canonical’s mobile plans haven’t been a secret for a long while, but the company is yet to actually launch its first Ubuntu handset. However, the Meizu MX3 has been spotted running Ubuntu in images and videos.

Images and even a video showing the handset in action with Canonical’s mobile OS on top have been leaked on Weibo from an official Meizu account, PocketNow reports. However, that doesn’t mean the phone will become the first Ubuntu phone, or one of the models expected to launch in the next months, as Canonical is yet to say anything on the matter. Check out the video below to see Ubuntu running on the handset.

]]>https://www.androidauthority.com/meizu-mx3-ubuntu-images-video-333244/feed/10Ubuntu coming to high-end smartphones during 2014https://www.androidauthority.com/ubuntu-smartphones-in-2014-323746/
https://www.androidauthority.com/ubuntu-smartphones-in-2014-323746/#commentsWed, 11 Dec 2013 09:38:40 +0000https://www.androidauthority.com/?p=323746Canonical announced the launch of Ubuntu for phones back in January, but other than the unfortunate Ubuntu Edge episode there hasn’t really been much news about the fledgling mobile version of the popular Linux distribution. However, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical and its product strategy leader, has now revealed that the company has signed its first agreement to ship Ubuntu on mobile phones!

[quote qtext=”We have concluded our first set of agreements to ship Ubuntu on mobile phones.” qperson=”Mark Shuttleworth” qsource=”” qposition=”left”]Shuttleworth didn’t reveal who Ubuntu’s new OEM partner is, but he did say that Ubuntu will come to high-end phones during 2014. It also looks like this first deal is but one of many. “We are now pretty much at the board level on four household brands. They sell a lot of phones all over the world, in emerging and fully emerged markets, to businesses and consumers,” said Shuttleworth.

Ubuntu is designed to work on two types of smartphone, the entry level device which needs to have a dual-core processor and at least 512 MB of RAM, and the high-end that needs a quad-core processor with at least 1GB of RAM. The main difference between the two is that the high-end “Superphone” can also act as a PC when connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse! If this is the type of high-end phone that Shuttleworth is talking about then 2014 could be a very interesting year indeed!

The mobile operating system market is becoming increasingly crowded and newcomers will find it difficult to make an impact. Besides Android and iOS, companies like Microsoft and BlackBerry are trying to increase their market shares while newer offerings such as Firefox OS and Tizen are trying to gain a foothold. Is there room for Ubuntu? Clearly Canonical thinks there is. Along with partnerships with popular online services like Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, Amazon and Pinterest, Ubuntu has a secret weapon. Thanks to the Ubuntu SDK, native apps can be written to work across all versions of Ubuntu, on the desktop, Smart TVs, Ubuntu tablets and Ubuntu smartphones. This is something that Google and Apple don’t offer and something that Microsoft has botched with Windows.

Canonical has done a good job of getting carrier endorsements. Networks like Vodafone, 3, EE, KT, SK Telecom, Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, T-Mobile, PT, and others have all endorsed Ubuntu for smartphones. These companies have all signed up to Ubuntu’s Carrier Advisory Group which lets mobile operators shape Ubuntu’s mobile strategy.

Shuttleworth sees mobile as a key part of Ubuntu’s future. Although Canonical isn’t profitable today it could be if the company just focused on its PC and server business and dropped mobile. However, Shuttlworth thinks that dropping mobile would give Canonical “a lifespan measured in years, not decades.”

Since Ubuntu is an open source operating system, and Canonical will share the code openly, and thanks to the Ubuntu SDK developers, carriers and manufacturers are already able to build apps for Ubuntu. The question is, will they?

Android users have been able to play around with Canonical’s mobile build of Ubuntu for a while now, but today Ubuntu “Saucy Salamander” 13.10 finally has reached ‘stable’ status. This means Ubuntu 13.10 is finally ready to go as an everyday platform – well at least almost.

The desktop variant seems fully ready, but the mobile build is still lacking in several key ways. First, there are almost no apps that are optimized for tablets and smartphones. Second, only a select amount of Android devices are able to run it. Third, no official Ubuntu phones will exist until next year.

Additionally, one of the biggest selling points isn’t there yet. We’re talking about the ability to transform Ubuntu to a traditional desktop experience when hooked to a TV or monitor, which is unfortunately not present in Ubuntu 13.10.

The problem is that the desktop/server version of Ubuntu still uses the older X Window system, while the mobile build requires the new mobile-friendly display server, Mir. The situation won’t change until Mir rolls out to the desktop/server version in Ubuntu 14.04, sometime in April.

[quote qtext=”The desktop at this stage doesn’t fully support the new graphics architecture that is now enabled on the phone OS. It’s something we are working very rapidly towards.” qperson=”Richard Collins” qsource=”Canonical product manager for mobile” qposition=”center”]

Beyond the lack of desktop ‘mode’ and scarce amount of apps, Canonical also admits that certain areas of usability still need to be addressed before Ubuntu is really ready to work as a true Android alternative.

Long story short:Ubuntu’s mobile efforts have come a long way since the project was first officially announced at the beginning of the year, but they’re still nowhere near close to where they need to be if Canonical is interested in seriously competing in the mobile arena.

What do you think of Ubuntu’s mobile ambition, still looking forward to Ubuntu on your mobile device or not?

Because Canonical opted for a fixed funding campaign, it won’t get to keep the money it raised and all backers will be refunded their contributions.

According to an update from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, almost 20,000 people have contributed to the campaign with hundreds of dollars each, along with three businesses that opted for the $7000 Enterprise Starter Kit perk and one massive contribution from Bloomberg LP, which contributed $80,000.

Ubuntu Edge broke the record for the largest crowdfunded sum, which was previously held by the Pebble smartwatch Kickstarter project. Still, Pebble remains that largest successful campaign ever.

It’s safe to say that the Ubuntu Edge campaign was very successful from the perspective of raising awareness about Canonical’s Ubuntu Phone project. The fact that several thousand people were ready to pay $700 or more for a phone that doesn’t even exist is very encouraging from Canonical’s plans to bring to market by 2014 the first devices running Ubuntu Phone, a mobile-optimized version of Linux.

What about Ubuntu Edge? The dual-booting (Android + Ubuntu Phone) device raised the pulse of quite a few technology fans. Will it ever make it to market? Mark Shuttleworth hinted that a new campaign is possible:

[quote qtext=”“Who knows, perhaps one day we’ll take everything we’ve learned from this campaign — achievements and mistakes — and try it all over again.”” qperson=”” qsource=”” qposition=”center”]

And there’s always the possibility that Edge will be founded by a corporate backer or through venture capital.